Using ICT to support water sector monitoring: how underlying drivers shape incentives and outcomes

The use of new ICT tools to support water services provision is expanding rapidly. Mobile phone and web technologies are particularly being used for monitoring the performance of service providers (e.g. for data collection, the reporting of break downs or oversight of service delivery). This paper looks at some of the drivers underpinning this trend and suggests how these drivers need to be understood during the design of any ICT-based monitoring system. Our observation is that too often the focus appears to be on the tools themselves or on the ability to collect data in a different way – and not sufficiently on what the data gets used for (or how the provision of data can actually change the dynamics on the ground). As a South African based company working in the ICT and water sectors, SeeSaw has good experience of designing and adapting ICT tools to support the WASH sector – we leverage this to suggest some early lessons and to suggest a slight ‘reality check’ to the implementation and adoption of ICT – making sure that the positive contributions are not lost through poor design or over-ambitious approaches.